Building VTK 9.0 with Qt 5.15

This guide will help you build VTK 9.0 with Qt 5.15. This procedure has been tested on Windows 10 and Debian-based Linux.

Prerequisites

CMake 3.8+ installed
Qt 5.x downloaded. The Qt directory will be refered to as <QT-DIR>
C++ compiler installed (like GCC or VS 2019). The compiler name will be refered to as <COMPILER>

1. Download VTK source code

Download the source code from http://VTK.org/download/ and unpack it to a directory. This directory will be refered to as <VTK-SOURCE-DIR>

2. Start CMake

Start the CMake GUI application

3. Specify source and build directory

Source directory = <VTK-SOURCE-DIR>

Build directory = <VTK-SOURCE-DIR>/Build (For example)

4. Start project configuration

Specify a generator like 'Unix makefiles' on linux or 'MS Visual Studio 16 2019' on Windows.

5. Specify entries and re-configure untill no more changes occur

Set the following values when asked for:

Name	Value
VTK_GROUP_ENABLE_Qt	YES
Qt5_DIR	<QT-DIR>/5.15.1/<COMPILER>/lib/cmake/Qt5
VTK_Group_Qt	YES
VTK_MODULE_ENABLE_VTK_GUISupportQt	YES
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE (Linux only, Makefiles)	Release
CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES (Windows only, MSVC)	Release

Enable 'advanced' to see all entries and specify other Qt entries if they are not found automatically.

6. Generate project

Click on 'generate'. A buildable project will be created based on the chosen generator.

7. Build project

Build generated project using make (on Linux) or Visual Studio (on Windows)